You know, a lot of people turn their nose up at these movies for just being Tom Cruise stunt reels, but...I don't see that as a bad thing.

So, I watched Roland Emme- I mean, Dean Devlin's Geostorm the other day. Wasn't expecting much, as I knew it was basically going to be "Roland Emmerich lite" in the same way that Pfister's Transcendence was his way of mimicing Nolan and Battleship was Paramount riding on the success of Bay's Transformers.

The movie itself surprised me on a few fronts: it has relatively little environmental destruction (not much of an exaggeration to say that most of the destruction money shots were used in the trailers), and instead was much more of a character-driven story. And the fact that it had a crisp runtime of 1 hour 50 minutes, when compared to the usual 2-2.5 hours that some of these epics have.

As for the VFX, I think it's an even bigger hit-and-miss than Stephen Sommers' movies. You'd think that for a blockbuster producer like Devlin, he'd have enough experience to at least be consistently competent with VFX across the board. Instead, what I found with the work was that the natural environment destruction (tornados, earthquakes, lightning storms, tidal waves) was on par with the kind of CGI you'd expect circa 2008, while any of the outer space/space station work was supber.

Seriously, there's scenes of collapsing buildings and bridges and entirely CG shots of roadways with dozens of cars and it just screamed "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra Paris Car Chase Sequence". The Day After Tomorrow, 2012, Man of Steel, San Andreas, Independence Day: Resurgence... all had immensely superior city destruction scenes. But with Geostorm, when buildings collapses and broke apart, it legitimately felt like I was watching their pre-viz. The buildings had no weight to them. Skyscrapers were falling to the ground in big chunks and in a matter of 2 seconds, instead of the long, drawn-out collapses that you'd (theoretically, as I have no real-world experience with collapsing buildings, thankfully) see in real life. It was destruction porn, but it wasn't even good destruction porn.

With that said, the outer space scenes that dealt with spaceships and space stations were really, really good looking. Hard-surface work seems to be a popular topic lately, and whichever vendor was responsible for the space station work did a great job (similar to Independence Day: Resurgence's spaceship/space station work, which was also really good).

ShaneP wrote:Sometimes I miss the old days when merely ten vfx companies worked on a film.

Same here. Those good ol' days back in 2010.

In all seriousness, though, Geostorm was exactly the kind of movie that would necessitate that many vendors. Lots of isolated sequences of natural disaster destruction, the natural disasters on Earth and the space station in space, lots of green-screen windows and widget elements inside the space station. Wouldn't surprise me if the last half-dozen or so of those vendors worked on only a handful of shots, based on how small their team credits were.

Geostorm sat on the shelf for 3 years they knew immediately it was not going to be possible to craft something watchable out of it. I think its ok but also you can see all the issues with the sloppy editing & disjointed storyline.

Armageddon by far is still the best example of this type of movie done well. I remember Todd did a great piece on the VFX on his own website back in the day....just checked its still up & such a great website as well http://www.vfxhq.com/1998/armageddon.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um0aZKbpe1YMI6 behind the scenes on the practical helicopter FX with Cruise flying looks insane this is going to be an exciting movie no way to fake this in IMAX and they are not even trying to CG it so full marks to Cruise & Paramount for letting him even do his own flying.

PaulILMFan wrote:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um0aZKbpe1YMI6 behind the scenes on the practical helicopter FX with Cruise flying looks insane this is going to be an exciting movie no way to fake this in IMAX and they are not even trying to CG it so full marks to Cruise & Paramount for letting him even do his own flying.

And what's interesting is that Tom is actually a licensed and trained pilot. He receives a separate credit in American Made as "Cessna/[other model of aircraft that I can't recall at the moment] Pilot". Like, after all of the cast, right around where the Stunt Coordinator or trained helicopter/aircraft pilots would be, sure enough, "Tom Cruise - Cessna/Aircraft Pilot".

ShaneP wrote:Speaking of movies sitting on the shelf...when the heck is Andy Serkis' Tarzan movie going to come out?

ShaneP wrote:Speaking of movies sitting on the shelf...when the heck is Andy Serkis' Tarzan movie going to come out?

You mean his Jungle Book movie? Or is he making a Tarzan movie, too?

Yes, sorry got my jungle movies mixed up. It is his Jungle Book movie. I know he's been working on that movie for at least the last three or four years. I think he actually shot the movie back before Episode 7 came out. No idea what happened to it.

ShaneP wrote:Yes, sorry got my jungle movies mixed up. It is his Jungle Book movie. I know he's been working on that movie for at least the last three or four years. I think he actually shot the movie back before Episode 7 came out. No idea what happened to it.

As far as I know, it's still on track for October of this year. Latest news was a month or so ago where they revealed the title change from Jungle Book: Origins to Mowgli.

Originally it was October of 2016...and then it was bumped to October 2017...and now it's October 2018. It's been delayed longer than most films take to make.

ShaneP wrote:Yes, sorry got my jungle movies mixed up. It is his Jungle Book movie. I know he's been working on that movie for at least the last three or four years. I think he actually shot the movie back before Episode 7 came out. No idea what happened to it.

As far as I know, it's still on track for October of this year. Latest news was a month or so ago where they revealed the title change from Jungle Book: Origins to Mowgli.

Originally it was October of 2016...and then it was bumped to October 2017...and now it's October 2018. It's been delayed longer than most films take to make.

Good grief. Just looked up some production history on it. Serkis was set to direct this back in early 2014, shot it in early 2015.